In his concealed perch on the hillside to the west of the autovia, Miguel cursed again as he watched the Renault saloon dance and jiggle around through the magnified optics of his telescopic sight. Obviously the driver had realized what was going on, and was doing his best to make the car as difficult a target as possible. And he was, the Spaniard had to concede, making a pretty good job of it.
One of the most difficult shots for any sniper is a fast moving target crossing at right angles to the line of fire, and the degree of difficulty is enormously magnified if that target isn’t moving at a steady speed.
Miguel picked his moment and fired again, but even as he squeezed the trigger he knew the bullet would miss, because again the car braked unexpectedly. He worked the bolt again, chambering the last cartridge from the four-round magazine, and adjusted his aim once more.
As the weaving Renault loomed in his telescopic sight again, Miguel came to a decision. His chances of hitting one of the tyres while the driver was actively trying to avoid proceeding at anything approaching a steady speed were almost nil. It was time to forget about the ‘accident’ scenario and simply take out the two occupants of the car. His people would just have to sort out the resulting mess as best they could.
He shifted his aim, lifting the barrel of the rifle slightly so that the graticule of his telescopic sight was pointing directly at the middle of the driver’s side window, and at the shadowy figure behind the glass. Miguel allowed what he thought was the right lead, and squeezed the trigger.
And that shot, he knew, was a good one.
98
Bronson braked heavily, still continuing his erratic evasive action. As he did so, there was a loud bang. The car shuddered as the bullet from the sniper’s rifle ripped into the thin metal of the bonnet and ploughed its way out through the right front wing.
Angela squealed in fear and clutched at Bronson’s right arm as she saw the metal tear open just inches in front of the windscreen.
‘Are you OK?’ Bronson asked anxiously, glancing at her as he again started to weave and accelerate.
‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine. God, he’s going to get us!’
Bronson checked the instruments, in case the bullet had ruptured a hydraulic line or torn apart a section of the electrical system, but saw no abnormal readings.
He braked firmly, then accelerated again, keeping his foot hard down on the pedal, and swung the car over to the left, almost into the southbound, left-hand lane of the road and drove straight towards the oncoming traffic.
‘What are you doing now?’ Angela demanded, stifling a gasp, her eyes wide and staring as a maroon-coloured saloon car swept past them in the opposite direction, the driver’s hand pressed firmly on the horn.
‘Trying to save our lives,’ Bronson said. ‘Hang on.’
He braked hard again, twitched the steering wheel to the right, and then accelerated as hard as he could.
Miguel knew that his last shot had hit the car, but he didn’t know where. He’d been expecting to see the side window shatter, but that hadn’t happened. It was possible the bullet had dropped further than he’d expected, but the car was continuing with undiminished speed, so presumably the round hadn’t hit the engine or any other vital component. He still had to stop it, somehow.
Miguel shook another four rounds out of the box of ammunition on the ground beside him, fed all of them into the magazine as quickly as he could, loaded the first cartridge and immediately brought the rifle back to the aim. In under half a second, the now familiar shape of the Renault saloon filled his telescopic sight and again he concentrated on nothing but the sight picture.
And now, it looked as if the driver was trying to rely just on speed to get away from the ambush, because the car seemed to be accelerating steadily, no sign of braking or even weaving.
Miguel smiled slightly. That, he knew, was definitely a big mistake. He didn’t care how fast the car was travelling: there was no way it could outrun a bullet from his rifle. He allowed a little more lead to account for the increased speed of the target, took a breath, released about half of it to still his breathing, checked the sight picture once more, and squeezed the trigger.
Then the nose of the Renault dipped again under braking, but Miguel knew the driver had reacted too late.
99
Bronson transferred his foot from the brake to the accelerator pedal, slammed the gear lever into third, and continued to drive the car as fast as he possibly could. He’d seen their possible salvation.
‘I thought you needed to brake and weave,’ Angela asked, a tremor in her voice. ‘Why are you going so fast?’
Bronson kept both hands on the steering wheel, and gestured with his chin.
‘To get alongside them,’ he replied, ‘as quickly as possible. He won’t be able to shoot through them.’
Angela stared through the windscreen as realization dawned.
‘And I never even saw them coming,’ she said.
Miguel recoiled involuntarily from the rifle. Something totally unexpected had just happened. He’d been expecting to see the impact of the bullet on the driver’s door — he had no doubt that that last shot would end the matter — but instead his sight picture had suddenly filled with a flat white object moving across his field of vision with a blur of speed.
He looked up, away from the telescopic sight and realized in that instant precisely why the driver of the car had been travelling so fast and with minimal evasion. Heading south, down the western side of the autovia, was a long line of articulated lorries, a rolling bulletproof shield that would protect the target vehicle until it was almost certainly out of range. With the trucks doing perhaps seventy to eighty kilometres an hour downhill and heading south, and with the car on the other side of the autovia heading north at — probably — by now well over 120 kilometres an hour, Miguel knew he had no chance of hitting it in the split second gaps when the car might be fleetingly visible to him.
For a moment, he wondered where his last bullet had hit, but in a few moments it became perfectly obvious. The driver of the leading truck switched on his hazard warning lights and began braking the vehicle to a halt on the hard shoulder just off the carriageway. Miguel swung his rifle around so that he could take a look at it through the telescopic sight, and the hole in the right-hand side of the truck’s engine compartment was immediately obvious. His shot had been good, he knew that, but in that fraction of a second before it should have hit the Renault saloon, the lorry had simply driven into the bullet’s path.
Miguel didn’t hesitate. As soon as the driver of the truck saw the bullet hole, he would know exactly what had happened and would immediately call the police. It would take them time to get there, but he needed to be long gone from the hillside before that happened. The car was by now out of range and invulnerable. Cursing, he unloaded the rifle and slipped it into the carrying case, picked up the ammunition and all of the spent cartridges that had been ejected from the weapon, and made his way as quickly as he could off the hill.
He’d have to make the call straight away. Now it would all depend on what forces they would have time to mobilize against this man and woman in France. But that wasn’t his problem.
100
The posted speed limit at the entrance to the Somport Tunnel was 80 kilometres per hour. As Bronson turned on the headlamps and swung the Renault around the gentle left-hand curve that led into the tunnel entrance, the car was travelling at almost double that, well over 140 kilometres an hour. He applied the brakes and the Renault immediately began to slow.